One of the most stubborn aspects of America's racial imagination is the insistence on having a term to separate and identify people of Latin American descent.

It's a minefield of geography, color and language since we can be of any race and have few things in common beyond some degree of adherence to the Spanish tongue. This is why U.S. Latinos generally prefer to self-identify by their family's country of origin - Mexican, Colombian, Salvadoran, etc.

Non-Latinos, though, have always needed an umbrella term for labeling us as one. It was French colonists who first dubbed us "Latin" Americans, as a way of distinguishing their colonial project from Anglo colonization in the Western Hemisphere.

Williams passed away on Feb. 20 in Pasadena, at the age of 86, enough time to be denied a rightful ride in the Rose Parade because of her race and decades later to see that wrong righted.

When officials discovered Williams was a light-complexioned African American, the float she was to ride was canceled. Her story finally publicized, Williams got her trip down Colorado Boulevard in the 2015 Rose Parade…